1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the feeding of web material to, for example, web-utilising machinery.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Machines of numerous types have a requirement for the supply of materials in continuous web form. For example cigarette-making machines, cigarette filter-making machines and cigarette-packing machines require to be fed with continuous webs of material such as cigarette paper, filter-plugwrap paper, metallic foil and plastics film material. It is usual in the case of such tobacco-industry machinery for reels of the materials to be mounted on the respective machines.
In the current search for higher rates of machine productivity, various expedients have been proposed for reducing the necessity for, or frequency of, intervention by the machine operator. One reason for operator intervention is the replenishment of expiring reels of web materials. It has heretofore been necessary in the case of tobacco-industry machines for a machine operator to carry out manual procedures in connection with each replacement of an expiring reel by a fresh reel and the splicing operation between the old and new webs. Similar manual procedures have had to be carried out upon the occurrence of a web breakage.
It is an object of the present invention to provide web-supply or reel store and web-supply apparatus which requires reduced operator intervention, possibly only a re-charging of a store with a supply of fresh reels once per shift or per day. It is a further object of the present invention to provide apparatus such that a continuous web can be fed effectively to a web-utilising machine from a position remote from the machine.